Person Reliability

Abstract

Person changes can be of three kinds: developmental trends, swells, and tremors. Person unreliability in the tremor sense (momentary fluctuations) can be estimated from person characteristic curves. Average person reliability for groups can be compared from item characteristic curves.

An Item Response Theory Analysis of Response Stability in Personality Measurement

“…It is extremely simple and does not take into account several factors that can modify the prediction, including: (1) retest effects due to memory or specific error (Nunnally, 1970;Schmidt & Hunter, 1996); (2) changes in consistency due to experience with the test (Fiske, 1966;Knowles, 1988); and (3) individual changes in θ , such as tremors (momentto-moment shifts) and swells (short-term mood swings) that take place between testing (Lumsden, 1977). However, these factors are very difficult to model mathematically.…”

A Pearson-Type-VII item response model for assessing person fluctuation

“…Fiske & Rice, 1955;Lumsden, 1977) generally distinguish between three types of variability over time: (a) long term (e.g. stability over years); (b) short-term (e.g.…”

“…However, the literature is scattered, and the phenomenon appears under such different names as 'oscillations' (Hull, 1917(Hull, , 1943, 'individual unreliability' (Mitra & Fiske, 1956), 'type-1 spontaneous variability' (Fiske & Rice, 1955), 'tremors' (Lumsden, 1977), and 'fluctuations' (Lumsden, 1978;Thouless, 1936), which is the term used here. Hull (1917) considered momentary variability to be a universal principle of behaviour and was the first to deal with the topic systematically.…”

“…17). Lumsden (1977) picked up on these ideas and proposed that there was a type of variability due to rapid momentary random fluctuations in the trait level (in theory, any type of trait). Lumsden also hypothesized that there were reliable individual differences in the magnitude of these momentary fluctuations.…”

“…Parallel to the theoretical developments, several models that take into account momentary fluctuation have been developed (Coombs, 1948a, b;Helmstader, 1957;Jackson, 1986;Levine & Rubin, 1979;Lumsden, 1977;Mosier, 1942;Reise, 2000;Strandmark & Linn, 1987;Tyler, 1968;Weiss, 1973). These models have widely differing objectives and terminology.…”